First Mass in the Sagrada Família: The Pope Beatifies Gaudí
Benedict XVI is going to Barcelona to consecrate the masterpiece basilica. And he is proposing it as a model for modern builders of churches. A visitor's guide to the astonishing edifice
by Sandro Magister
ROME, November 5, 2010 – Tomorrow, Saturday, Benedict XVI will visit the cathedral of Santiago di Compostela, for centuries one of the leading pilgrimage destinations in Christendom.
But above all, on Sunday, November 7, in Barcelona, the pope will consecrate – while celebrating the Mass for the first time there – the basilica of the Sagrada Família, the stunning masterpiece of Christian art conceived by the brilliant architect Antoni Gaudí, whose beatification cause is underway.
It is impossible not to see a message in this act of the pope. The Sagrada Família is an exceptionally powerful lesson for the sacred art of today: the exact opposite of so many modern tendencies toward bare and empty geometry in which the Christian mystery is lost, instead of making itself seen and lived.
Begun more than a century ago, and continued amid ups and downs after the death of its designer in 1926, the construction of this basilica is still far from being completed. But each year two and a half million visitors go to visit the construction site. From the master to the disciples, this church is growing with a plurality of contributions and styles that recalls that of the medieval cathedrals.
The Sagrada Família is a grandiose open book. A theater between heaven and earth in which all the arts come together to enact the sacred history of the world, and draw everyone into the adventure.
Gaudí and the architects and artists who continued his project – from Lluís Bonet i Garí to Joan Vila-Grau, from Josep Maria Subirachs to Etsuro Sotoo – have created a work so rich in symbols as to demand time, competence, and passion simply to read it.
An additional art that this basilica has generated is precisely the art of its interpretation. One who excels in it is an Italian-Spanish Jesuit, Jean-Paul Hernández, author of the most beautiful book yet published on the symbols and spirit of the Sagrada Família, issued in 2007 with the title, "Antoni Gaudí. La parola nella pietra."
Some suggestions from the book are recalled here. They are small fragments of an immensely more vast account, between the divine and the human, destined to remain always open like the construction site that the visitors discover in Barcelona.
THE TOWERS
The bell towers are what makes the deepest and most immediate impression on those who approach the Sagrada Família for the first time. The visitor sees eight of these today, four for each of the two lateral facades. But there are supposed to be eighteen of them in all: another four on the main facade; another five above the central cross vault, with the highest dedicated to Christ and the others to the evangelists; and finally, one above the apse, dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
The tapered form of the towers recalls the North African architecture that Gaudí loved. Suspended between heaven and earth, they give the impression of reaching upward, but also of descent from above. They are the heavenly Jerusalem that comes down from heaven.
Each of the twelve towers above the three facades is dedicated to one of the twelve apostles. The twelve unite earth and heaven because by proclaiming the Gospel, they call people to enter into the new Jerusalem. At the top, the twelve towers culminate in the emblem of the bishops: the miter, the crosier, the ring. The apostles speak and act through their successors.
On each tower are carved the words "Sanctus," and, near the top, "Hosanna in excelsis." They are the words of the song that introduces the great Eucharistic prayer, the liturgy of the earthly and heavenly Church that is celebrated at each Mass.
For the central towers, which have not yet been begun, the point of reference is the Christ Pantokrator, which dominates the mosaics in the apses of so many ancient churches. As in the vision of Revelation, the Pantokrator is surrounded by the "four living creatures," the evangelists, the witnesses of divine revelation, of the opening of the heavens. But the symbol of Christ here is not the throne. It is the cross, the great cross with the lamb at the center that will rise above the central tower, and further up, the glorious and regal cross of the Gospel of John.
THE FACADES
Gaudí wanted to orient the church toward the rising sun. He was unable to do so: the Sagrada Família rose along the north-south axis. But in exchange he designed two lateral facades, at the two ends of the transept: the one on the east dedicated to the Nativity, and the one on the west dedicated to the Passion. If Christ is the "sun of justice" and "the day that the Lord has made" (Psalm 118:24), then entering the basilica and participating in the liturgy is living "in" this day.
The ancient Christian basilicas often depict, on the two sides of the arch in front of the altar space, the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. For example, this is the case in the Roman basilica of Saint Mary Major. These are the cities of the two "passages," of the two "passions" of the life of Christ. Because even his birth, in Bethlehem, is framed by the passion: it is the eternal who becomes mortal and has himself placed in the manger ("mangiatoia"), to be eaten ("mangiato").
So Gaudí, with the two facades of the Nativity and the Passion, also interprets the Church as "passage." As the sun that is Christ passes through the Sagrada Família from east to west, from birth to redemptive death, the city of men – beginning with Barcelona, mostly situated to the west of the basilica – is called to make the opposite journey, from death to new birth.
THE PORTAL OF THE PASSION
In fact, just as the portal of the Nativity is joyous, exuberant, luminous, so Gaudí wanted the portal of the Passion to be "hard, bald, as if it were made of bone."
Executed and carved after his death on the basis of his drawings, but also with audacious innovations, the facade of the Passion embodies the vision in which Ezekiel discovers a plain filled with bones that the breath of the Spirit covers with tendons and flesh. To the exiled people, the prophet proclaims: "I will raise you up from your graves. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live again." In fact, the entire Passion concludes at the moment in which Jesus on the cross exhales the Spirit.
At the center of the facade, on top, stands the group of the crucifixion. Christ is naked, as Adam was, because he is the new Adam who on the cross recreates man as he was before sin, on the sixth day of the creation ancient and new, when he can finally say: "It is finished."
Christ's body is not resting on the cross, which does not stand vertically behind him. It juts out horizontally from the wall, and is made up of two iron beams. Christ is hanging there as from the hoist of a construction site. Subirachs, the author of the sculpture, took his inspiration from Saint Ignatius of Antioch: "You are stones of the temple prepared for construction by God the Father, raised with the hoist of Jesus Christ which is the cross, using as rope the Holy Spirit" (Letter to the Ephesians 9:1).
THE COLUMNS
The Sagrada Família is entirely surrounded by a cloister, for the first time in the history of Christian architecture. Gaudí thought of the cloister as a garden, the place where God and man can meet face to face, that garden which in the Bible is the image of paradise, of the promised land, and finally of the marriage between Christ and the Church.
This is why Gaudí arranged the interior of the basilica like a forest of trees. Because the garden of the new creation is there, with the Eucharist serving as the wedding feast. Every column is in the form of a tree, with its branches and foliage. Above the nave, colored pinnacles represent the fruits of the promised land, alternating with grapes and wheat, symbols of the Eucharist.
The desert is outside of this garden, it is the city of men still marked by sin. For Gaudì, even Barcelona was a desert. In his later years, he became a "monk in the city," with a life of disarming simplicity, in a little house near the construction site. But every day, the Sagrada Família was growing stone by stone, and he, the builder, was crying out to his city that the new creation has already begun, that the desert is starting to blossom.
This is the garden in which Benedict XVI, a pope with the name of a monk, will celebrate next Sunday, November 7, the wedding between Christ and the Bride.
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The book:
Jean-Paul Hernández, "Antoni Gaudí. La parola nella pietra. I simboli e lo spirito della Sagrada Família", Pardes Edizioni, Bologna, 2007, pp. 116, euro 20.00.__________
The official website, in various languages, of the foundation "La Sagrada Família," headed by the archbishop of Barcelona, with magnificent photos of the basilica:
> Temple expiatori Sagrada Família __________
The documentation of Benedict XVI's voyage
:
> Apostolic Journey to Santiago de Compostela and Barcelona, Novembre 6-7, 2010__________
All the articles from www.chiesa on this topic:
> Focus on ART AND MUSIC__________
English translation by
Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.
__________
5.11.2010
